History VideoGame / TearRingSaga

It got a 2005 sequel for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2, ''VideoGame/BerwickSaga'', which did an excellent job of further differentiating it from its ''Fire Emblem'' ancestor and making itself its own beast (no doubt due to the above).

* FourElementEnsemble: The recruitable mages and the Four Dragon Maidens each embody a particular element, although some of them can also use other elements and their promotion to Sage grants them the ability to use all of the elemental spells, including Light Magic.
** Maruj uses Wind Magic.
** Rischel uses Fire Magic.
** Meriah uses Light Magic.
** Alicia uses Thunder Magic.
** Sierra can use all of the other elements except Light Magic, but only she can use Dark Magic.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Played straight with most bosses and royalty, but averted with the enemy bosses with the Duke class. Aside from their valuable weaponry, they are barely more powerful than even their own soldiers.

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:If the player fails to defeat Gerxel in the Final Chapter before Turn 20, he will cast Black Rain and destroy all life in Lieberia.]]

Notoriously, [[SerialNumbersFiledOff it proved a bit too similar]] to ''Fire Emblem'' for Nintendo's liking, and they took Tirnanog and publisher Enterbrain to court over it. The latter was found guilty of violating unfair competition laws but not copyright infringement - fortunate, given Kaga's original plan for the game (named "''[[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute Emblem Saga]]''" and revised mid-development) was full of ''Fire Emblem'' references and even recurring characters. The rest of the lawsuit was settled out of court, and since then [[OldShame those involved seem to prefer not to discuss the matter]].

* AntiVillain: The Kingdom of Canaan is an entire nation of them. Aside from the few corrupt nobles with regarded as a disgrace to their own nation, many of them are good and decent people who are only obeying their King's orders, even if they don't agree with it.
* AnachronismStew: The game has ''tanks''! Granted they are arrow shooting tanks, but tanks nonetheless. It's implied that the tanks are actually ''pushed by hand'', with how both playable character of that class complain about it. Certainly explains why their movement is so bad.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Played straight with most bosses and royalty but averted with the enemy bosses with the Duke class. Aside from their valuable weaponry, they are barely more powerful then even their own soldiers.
* AwardBaitSong: Neverending Dream, especially with the English Version of the song.
* BattleCouple: Anyone with support relationship, but Roger and Mel are one of the earliest and most obvious examples; if one dies the other leaves the army and they can't be separated into different parties.
* BadPowersGoodPeople: The witch Sierra can wield the dark magic that only the wicked followers of the Cult of Gerxel can use but she is firmly on the good side.

* BlessedWithSuck: The Elemental Shamans are exploited for their ability to transform into Dragon and has only resulted in them having crappy lives as a result. The tragic story of the Princess Teeta of Leda's of being used as a weapon of war and degenerating into a mindless beast is a great example to that end.

** 1000 years before the events of the game. A small group of immigrants from the distant continent of Jugd came to Lieberia and established four dukedoms (Rivellia, Zemseria, Razelia and Nolzeria) that eventually united into the Reeve Republic. The native Zoan tribes feared the power of the settlers and launched a war against them. They were eventually defeated after five years by a ruthless Reevan consul named Denoas, who intended to exterminate all of the Zoans and refused any talks of surrender from the Zoans.
** A Zoan chieftain named Kalbazaan entered the forbidden temple at Mt. Cielo and attempted to beg for their god Gerxel for help. He instead found the sleeping Miradona, in form of a white dragon. Believing her to be their god, he drank her blood and gained the ability to transform into a powerful dragon but lost his sanity in the process. He then called himself Gerxel and using his newfound power, he established the Zoa Empire, destroyed the Republic of Reeve and conquered all of Lieberia.

** Carluon and Yutona married and established the Reevan Empire as King and Queen. With the death of Carluon, the empire was split by the nobles and the senators into four kingdoms: Reeve, Salia, Canaan and Leda. Meanwhile, the Zoans who continued to worship Gerxel were severely persecuted, with the Kingdom of Reeve publicly burning them alive, enslaving their children or transporting them to the prison island of Yr to be forced to make ships while the Kingdom of Canaan confined the remaining Zoans to Zoa Valley. The penal colony at Yr was eventually liberated by a slave rebellion led by Yoda and thanks to Duke Gramud and Admiral Vals settling the issue peacefully, Yr Island had established its independence.
** After the destruction of the Kingdom of Leda due to its king breaking the sacred law by using its sacred shaman as a weapon of war, the Zoans residing in Zoa Valley began a large-scale restoration of the cult, establishing the Theocracy of Gerxel led by Gwenchaos and began conquering the scattered lands of Leda and the Zoan lands surrounding Canaan. This prompted the Ledans to fight back against the Cult while the Kingdom of Canaan eventually conquered the Zoan lands of Barge, Sophia, Ava and Tirard. However, King Bahannuk of Canaan then signed a peace treaty with the Theocracy of Gerxel and proclaimed the establishment of the Zoan Empire. This gave the Theocracy of Gerxel the means and the authority to kill or enslave anyone in the empire who rejected or opposed the religion of Gerxel.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Not as bad as in ''Fire Emblem'', but there's some. Some of the priests since they can only use support magic and don't even have a class change. Also, some of the archers can't counterattack in close combat.

* CrutchCharacter: Zeek. You get him early on the game and he's easily one of the most powerful units in the party from the beginning but he leaves your party later on.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Narron may look like a scrawny youth but he becomes a powerful Gold Paladin once he's promoted. His Paragon skill ensures it happens.

* DarkIsEvil: The Theocracy of Gerxel uses Dark Magic, most of their ranks are ObviouslyEvil, [[EvilWearsBlack everyone of them wears dark and black outfits]] and they worship a GodOfEvil who practices {{Human Sacrifice}}s.
* DragonsAreDivine: The Emiyuu race, with Miradona being considered the Earth Goddess by the people of the Continent of Lieberia and the one who provided Carluon and Yutona the means to defeat Gerxel. [[spoiler: After the heroes defeated Gerxel, she appears to the heroes and resurrects the fallen heroes, sealed Gerxel and freed the souls of Gwenchaos and Teeta.]]

* EvilPrince: Lenzenheimer of Zemsellia is a member of the royal family of Reeve through his mother's bloodline. He's also a nasty piece of work who killed his mother for calling him out on his tyrannic rule on Razelia and that's just one of many of his evil actions.
* {{Expy}}: Just look at the box art above; if you aren't careful, you could mistake that alone for ''Thracia 776''. This also extends to game mechanics. Most of the skills are {{exp|y}}ies of ones from the Jugdral games. With some, like Continue, they didn't even bother to change the name. Others did, but are still pretty much ''Fire Emblem'' skills with a different name, such as Dragon Saint == Astra, (up to being associated with legendary Swordmasters) Geomancy == Luna and Life or Death == Wrath (despite working ''slightly'' differently).
* ExtraTurn: If Plum gains the Dancer skill, she'll be able to grant an extra turn to a single unit. Lyra's Sing skill can grant extra turns to multiple units but has a lower success rate.

* FauxActionGirl: Krishna. While she's a Sword Fighter like Julia, she has even lower growth rates than her and will require luck with her level ups or the stat increasing items although she naturally learns the Draco skill. In-game, it's also why she will not engage in a battle against Vega despite her wanting revenge for killing her beloved.
* FourElementEnsemble: The recruitable mages and the Four Dragon Maidens each embody a particular element although some of them can also use other elements and their promotion to Sage grants them the ability to use all of the elemental spells including Light Magic.

** Sierra can use all of the other elements except Light Magic but only she can use Dark Magic.

* GuideDangIt: Many optional events for characters and items but the requirements of recruiting Leteena take the cake for being utterly obtuse and impossible without a guide.

* HumanWeapon: The unfortunate treatment of the Elemental Shamans, misusing their ability to transform into a dragon as a weapon. The biggest example in game is when the King of Leda forcibly used his daughter Teeta as a weapon of war, hoping to end the long war against the Kingdom of Salia. It only ended with the destruction of the Kingdoms of Salia and Leda when Teeta was unable to transform into a human and degenerated into a beast.

* ItsAWonderfulFailure: [[spoiler:If you take too long to kill Gerxel in the final mission, he demonstrates the apocalyptic effects of Black Rain by killing ''every single unit on the map''. Only Tia is spared and only so Gerxel can gloat at her despair before killing her and achieving his full power.]]
* KillEmAll: [[spoiler: If the player fails to defeat Gerxel in the Final Chapter before Turn 20, he will cast Black Rain and destroy all life in Lieberia.]]

-->'''Incantation of Starlight''': ''Numera stellas si pote...''[[note]]Roughly translate as "number the stars if you can...," which is based on Genesis 15:5.[[/note]]

* LevelGrinding: Holmes's chapter encourages this as he is given free reign to move from location after location as opposed to Runan's linear path and there are places with repeatable battles for easy experience. It's even invoked at the first route split, as Holmes offers to take some of Runan's weaker soldiers off his hands and train them up to par.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yShsxwST-I Village of Swordsmen]] plays during Map 30, and ''only'' Map 30. The good news? It's a repeatable map, so you can hear it as many times as you want. The bad news? ''It's the very last map before the'' ''PointOfNoReturn'', so you probably won't know it even ''can'' be replayed, and even if you do, you won't have long to do so.
** The [[http://www.serenesforest.net/music/music_trs.html soundtrack]] contains several songs that weren't even used at all. Like ''Hero of Canaan'', seemingly a BossRemix of Holmes' regular battle theme, and judging by its name it was probably meant to be used for Ernst or Julius. There's also lyrical versions of the game's AwardBaitSong, in both Japanese AND English, but you only hear the instrumental and the English versions in-game.

** Sasha. She starts very weak and is a pain to train but if you grind her up to level 10 she then learns Elite and can promote to a Pegasus Knight (and later on, to Dragon Knight if you want). She can quickly become of one the more useful units.
** Both Narron, Sun and Leonie, low level characters can potentially become even more powerful through being able to naturally learn the Paragon skill.

* MightyGlacier: The Armor Knights and Generals have high offensive and defensive power but has low accuracy and speed while being limited to 3 movement spaces. Both Armor Knights Norton and Billford have ways to avert the "glacier" part of their class.
* ModularEpilogue: Just like in the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, the endings of each character changes depending on the actions of the player and whether or not they have activated the character-related events. For example: [[spoiler: If the player chooses to either accept or reject the choice to turn Raffin into a Wyvern Knight, his paired ending will be with Sharon or Esther respectively.]]

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Many characters in the Kingdom of Canaan aren't excited with how their king has them united with a hated cult, appointing corrupt nobles and conquering former allies but they are loyal to their country regardless. [[spoiler: Until it is found out how the Cult has their witch Carla brainwashing their king to be their pawn.]]

** Shigen. His personal sword revives him and if he doesn't have his sword then the witch Sierra will whisk him away. [[spoiler: Zeek is also rescued by his sister if his HP reaches 0.]] Lionheart also counts while he's a NPC.

* {{Permadeath}}: You can revive a character later in game, but most of the time a death remains permanent unless you have the Dakuron but even then it only has three uses and it can only be used at a certain part of the game.

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: Holmes' party when compared to Runan's party, even with the player option to switch characters from both parties. Most of the characters Runan recruits in his chapters are soldiers, knights, mercenaries and even royalty. Holmes' party can recruit a bandit chief, a female sword fighter who can steal items, two CuteBruiser trainee soldiers, a CloudCuckoolander Cleric and [[spoiler: A witch from the Cult of Gerxel.]]
* RandomNumberGod: As in ''Fire Emblem'', the RNG can make or break characters; it's entirely possible gain a level without getting any stat increases at all.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To the ''Fire Emblem'' series but particularly to ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'' due to both games having two protagonists on two separate paths, a world map that the main characters can freely move on and the presence of monsters.

** A Zoan chieftain named Kalbazaan entered the forbidden temple at Mt. Cielo and attempted to beg for their god Gerxel for help. He instead found the sleeping Miradona, in form of a white dragon. Believing her to be their god, he drank her blood and gained the abilty to transform into a powerful dragon but lost his sanity in the process. He then called himself Gerxel and using his newfound power, he established the Zoa Empire, destroyed the Republic of Reeve and conquered all of Lieberia.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Narron may look like a scrawy youth but he becomes a powerful Gold Paladin once he's promoted. His Paragon skill ensures it happens.

* DragonsAreDivine: The Emiyuu race, with Miradona being considered the Earth Goddess by the people of the Continent of Lieberia and the one who provided Carluon and Yutona the means to defeat Gerxel. [[spoiler: After the heroes defeated Gerxel, she appears to the heroes and ressurects the fallen heroes, sealed Gerxel and freed the souls of Gwenchaos and Teeta.]]
* DittoFighter: Narcus.

* EvilPrince: Lenzenheimer of Zemsellia is a member of the royal family of Reeve through his mother's bloodline. He's also a nasty piece of work who killed his mother for calling him out on his tyrantic rule on Razelia and that's just one of many of his evil actions.

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: Holmes' party when compared to Runan's party, even with the player option to switch characters from both parties. Most of the characters Runan recruits in his chapters are soldiers, knights, mecenaries and even royalty. Holmes' party can recruit a bandit chief, a female sword fighter who can steal items, two CuteBruiser trainee soldiers, a CloudCuckoolander Cleric and [[spoiler: A witch from the Cult of Gerxel.]]

* SquishyWizard: Maruju, Meriah, Alicia, Rishel, Sierra.

** Gerxel then enslaved many of the non-Zoan peoples and had many female slaves sacrificed at Mt. Cielo. When the majority of the Zoans stopped worshipping him and instead fought to oppose him and his empire, he also had them enslaved the same way as the non-Zoans endured. Eventually, he and his empire was defeated by the rebel leader Carluon and Yutona, both aided by the Earth Goddess Miradona. The citizens of Canaan were descended from the Zoans who abandoned Gerxel culture.

** Gerxel then enslaved many of the non-Zoan peoples and had many female slaves sacrificed at Mt.Cielo. When the majority of the Zoans stopped worshipping him and instead fought to oppose him and his empire, he also had them enslaved the same way as the non-Zoans endured. Eventually, he and his empire was defeated by the rebel leader Carluon and Yutona, both aided by the Earth Goddess Miradona. The citizens of Canaan were descended from the Zoans who abandoned Gerxel culture.

** A Zoan chieftain named Kalbazaan entered the forbidden temple at Mt.Cielo and attempted to beg for their god Gerxel for help. He instead found the sleeping Miradona, in form of a white dragon. Believing her to be their god, he drank her blood and gained the abilty to transform into a powerful dragon but lost his sanity in the process. He then called himself Gerxel and using his newfound power, he established the Zoa Empire, destroyed the Republic of Reeve and conquered all of Lieberia.

* TheEmpire: The Zoan Empire. After King Bahanuk conquered the Zoan nations of Zoa Valley, he signed a peace treaty with the Theocracy of Gerxel and united the Kingdom of Canaan with them. He had then declared war and conquered the Kingdoms of Salia and Reeve. Their expansionism bites them in the ass as their forces have sustained too many losses during their conquest of the two kingdoms and the Kingdoms of Salia and Leda are still going strong against them. It doesn't help that the King appointed corrupt and incompetent nobles in charge of the occupied territories.

* FinalDeath: You can revive a character later in game, but most of the time a death remains permanent unless you have the Dakuron but even then it only has three uses and it can only be used at a certain part of the game.

* DragonsAreDivine: The Emiyuu race, with Miradona being considered the Earth Goddess by the people of the Continent of Lieberia and the one who provided Carluon and Yutona the means to defeat Gerxel. [[spoiler: After the heroes defeated Gerxel, she appears to the heroes and ressurects the fallen heroes, sealed Gerxel and freed the souls of Gwenchaos amd Teeta.]]

''Tear Ring Saga: Utna Heroes Saga'' is a 2001 video game created by Shouzou Kaga, the creator of the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, fresh from leaving Intelligent Systems to form his own company, Tirnanog. Unsurprisingly, ''Tear Ring Saga'' is considered to be a SpiritualSuccessor to ''Fire Emblem'' and incorporates the vast majority of ''Fire Emblem'''s gameplay, mechanisms and general flavouring.

* GeoEffect: A group of skills are terrain skills, which grant the unit bonus accuracy and avoid and extra movement depending on the battlefield which are categorized. For example, the Seafarer skill is only affected by the sea map, which are usually boat maps, and Urbanite, which is only affected by castles and fortification maps.

* SpellLevels: Instead of the Weapon Levels used by modern ''Fire Emblem'' games, ''Tear Ring Saga'' treats the Weapon Levels as a growth stat that has a chance to increase per level up (like the older ''Fire Emblem'' games).

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TearRing_6217.jpg]]

* AnachronismStew: The game has ''tanks''! Granted they are arrow shooting tanks, but tanks nonetheless.
** It's implied that the tanks are actually ''pushed by hand'', with how both playable character of that class complain about it. Certainly explains why their movement is so bad.

* BlackKnight: Mintz is one, and Sun can promote to one. Zeek is of the "Dark" variety.

** Carluon and Yutona married and established the Reevan Empire as King and Queen. With the death of Carluon, the empire was split by the nobles and the senators into four kingdoms: Reeve, Salia, Canaan and Leda. Meanwhile, the Zoans who continued to worship Gerxel were severly persecuted, with the Kingdom of Reeve publicly burning them alive, enslaving their children or transporting them to the prison island of Yr to be forced to make ships while the Kingdom of Canaan confined the remaining Zoans to Zoa Valley. The penal colony at Yr was eventually liberated by a slave rebellion led by Yoda and thanks to Duke Gramud and Admiral Vals settling the issue peacefully, Yr Island had established its indepedence.

* FauxActionGirl: Krishna. While she's a Sword Fighter like Julia, she has even lower growth rates than her and will require luck with her level ups or the stat increasing items although she naturally learns the Draco skill.
** In-game, it's also why she will not engage in a battle against Vega despite her wanting revenge for killing her beloved.

* HumansAreBastards:[[spoiler:Gwenchaos' reason for turning evil in the first place, seeing the cruelty his innocent wife endured at the hands of human beings, from the King of Leda forcibly using her as a weapon of war to the many warriors trying and failing to kill her.]] The past and present history of Lieberia is sadly filled with these.

* ItsAWonderfulFailure: [[spoiler:If you take too long to kill Gerxel in the final mission, he demonstrates the apocalyptic effects of Black Rain by killing [[AC:every single unit on the map.]] Only Tia is spared and only so Gerxel can gloat at her despair before killing her and achieving his full power.]]

* LetNoCrisisGoToWaste: [[spoiler:In Chapter 25, Opportunistic gladiators and bandits aid Runan's army against the Kingdom of Canaan out of a desire to be rewarded and to have an excuse to rob from the enemy. Both Runan and Eugen are very aware of their rotten motives for aiding them.]]

* LevelGrinding: Holmes's chapter encourages this as he is given free reign to move from location after location as opposed to Runan's linear path and there are places with repeatable battles for easy experience.

* MagikarpPower: Sasha. She starts very weak and is a pain to train but if you grind her up to level 10 she then learns Elite and can promote to a Pegasus Knight (and later on, to Dragon Knight if you want). She can quickly become of one the more useful units.

* MookMaker: The summoners of Gerxel can summon a variety of monsters to bolster their forces depending on what staffs they use. Your clerics can also summon their own monsters if they accquire the same monster staffs.

* NonLethalKO: Shigen. His personal sword revives him and if he doesn't have his sword then the witch Sierra will whisk him away. [[spoiler: Zeek is also rescued by his sister if his HP reaches 0.]] Lionheart also counts while he's a NPC.

* TheQuisling: While the majority of the Kingdom of Canaan hates the Cult of Gerxel, some nobles actively support them for their own corrupt benefit.

* TheEmpire: The Zoan Empire. After King Bahanuk conquered the Zoan nations of Zoa Valley, he signed a peace treaty with the Theocracy of Gerxel and united the Kingdom of Canaan with them. He had then declared war and conquered the Kingdoms of Salia and Reeve.
** Their expansionism bites them in the ass as their forces have sustained too many losses during their conquest of the two kingdoms and the Kingdoms of Salia and Leda are still going strong against them. It doesn't help that the King appointed corrupt and incompetent nobles in charge of the occupied territories.

In 2019, Shouzou Kaga released ''another'' SpiritualSuccessor to ''Fire Emblem'' (and consequently these games as well) called ''Vestaria Saga I: War of the Scions.''

Grab the translation here: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/53111-tearring-saga-new-translation-finished-v104/